~ faith, family and resistance in early modern England

Category Archives: Fowle

In recent posts I’ve written about Thomas Lucke, the former Augustinian canon who was precentor of Michelham Priory, Sussex, until its suppression by Thomas Cromwell in 1537, and who was serving as a curate in the neighbouring parish of Litlington at the time of his death in 1552. Thomas was the brother of my 13 x great grandfather Richard Lucke of Mayfield, and Richard was the father of Alice Lucke who married Magnus Fowle: they were my 12 x great grandparents.

In my last post I noted that Thomas Lucke’s will of 1551, with its explicitly Catholic preamble, suggests that Thomas retained his attachment to England’s traditional faith, despite the fact that when he made his will he was serving as a priest in the reformed Church of England, two years after the Catholic mass had been banned by Edward VI. In addition to this evidence of Thomas’ religious sympathies, his will is also a useful source of information about his relatives and contemporaries, including as it does a substantial number of bequests. I’ve been following up some of these names, in an attempt to understand the milieu in which Thomas Lucke, and my other sixteenth-century ancestors, lived.

Gregory Martin mentioned in Thomas Lucke’s will of 1551

In his will, Thomas Lucke makes a number of bequests to his niece Alice, my 12 x great grandmother. One of them reads as follows:

I wyll of that monye that ys in Gregorye Martynes hands of Mayghfelde xlv to the povertie there to be dystrybuted by my executor. And the Resydue of the monye in his hands, I wyll halfe to Alice Lucke: the other halffe I wyll equally betwene Thomasyn Lucke and Elizabeth Lucke, by the hands of my executor to theme to be delyvred.

Gregory Martyn (or Marten, or Martin) is the only name that occurs both in Thomas’ will of 1551, and in the will of John Lucke of Mayfield, composed two years earlier in 1549 (see the previous post for my comments on the Catholic references in John’s will). I’m fairly certain that John was a relative of Thomas’, and may indeed have been another of his brothers. The witnesses to John Lucke’s will are listed as follows:

I’m almost certain that ‘mtty:’ is an abbreviation for ‘Martyn’ and that this is the same person who would be mentioned in Thomas Lucke’s will. There is at least one reference to Gregory Martin of Mayfield in the manorial court rolls from Edward’s reign: for example, on 4th October 1551 he was one of the twelve men ‘appointed for the lord king’ to the court; my ancestor Richard Lucke was another. However, my search for additional information about Martyn in the contemporary records has proven somewhat frustrating. His name does not appear in the 1524-5 lay subsidy rolls for Mayfield or indeed for anywhere else in Sussex, though the names of Christopher, Laurence and Thomas Marten can be found in the Mayfield listing. Nor can I find a will for a Gregory Martin in the Sussex archives.

Gregory Martin mentioned in Robert Sawyer’s will of 1529

However, there is one other reference to a Gregory Martin in the records, and it’s an intriguing one. In 1529 Robert Sawyer of Mayfield made his will. The opening paragraph is in Latin and it culminates in a list of witnesses, which includes the name ‘Gregorio Marten’. The word that follows this name is difficult to read, but it could be ‘clico’, which might be an abbreviation for ‘clerico’. Indeed, the transcript by the Sussex Record Society translates the word as ‘clerk’: in other words, priest.

Is this the same person who would appear in the wills of John and Thomas Lucke some twenty years later, and was he really a priest? Unfortunately, I’ve found no trace of a Gregory Martin in the clergy records, but they only begin in 1540. Could he have been a member of a religious order, rather than a secular priest? Then again, if the person mentioned in those later wills was a priest, why was he not described as such, given that Thomas Lucke doesn’t hesitate to append the word ‘clerke’ to the name of Richard Cressweller, one of the witnesses to his will? Had Gregory Martin ceased to serve as a priest by 1551, or is this a different person altogether?

Father Gregory Martin (via wikipedia)

Interestingly, my search online for clues as to the identity of Gregory Martin led me to a very different person with the same name: the Catholic priest, scholar and author who was chiefly responsible for the Douai-Rheims translation of the Bible that first appeared in 1582. Although this Gregory Martin’s origins are largely obscure, it’s said that he was born at Maxfield, in the parish of Guestling near Winchelsea – also in Sussex. Indeed, an introductory chapter to Martin’s book Roma Sancta, by George Bruner Parks, includes the following speculation:

There was an older ‘Gregory Martin clerk’ at Maughfield or Mayfield in northeast Sussex in 1529 and again in 1551, and the unusual Christian name makes it almost certain that he (if he was one man) was related to our author. If so, this priest, though he is not listed at either university, must have influenced the younger man’s schooling and vocation.

The references here are to the wills of Robert Sawyer (1529) and my ancestor Thomas Lucke (1551). One thing is certain: the Gregory Martin mentioned in Thomas Lucke’s will can’t be the priest and translator of the Bible, since the latter was probably born some time in the 1540s and would still have been a child when Thomas died. We know that this Gregory Martin went up to the newly-founded St John’s College, Oxford in 1557, as one of its first scholars, where he befriended and may have influenced the conversion of the future Catholic priest and martyr Edmund Campion. For a time Martin was a tutor in the household of the Duke of Norfolk, before the increasingly hostile atmosphere for Catholics under Elizabeth I prompted him to travel to the continent and join the English College at Douai. After a sojourn in Rome, he returned to the College at its new home in Rheims, where he worked on his translation of the New Testament, before dying of consumption soon after its publication.

As already noted, Father Gregory Martin was said to come from Guestling, near Winchelsea. At the time of the lay subsidy rolls of 1524-5, there was a John Marten living in the parish and two William Martens. As for Maxfield, reputed to be the Marten family home, there is still a house in Guestling known as Great Maxfield. Apparently the property belonged to Battle Abbey until its dissolution in 1538. However, I’ve found no trace in the records of any association between Maxfield and the Martin family. At one stage, this made me doubt the sources that claimed Maxfield as Gregory’s home: I even wondered if somebody had once misread ‘Mayfield’ as ‘Maxfield’ and the misunderstanding had become accepted as fact. The earliest source I’ve found is an 1843 edition of A Defence of the Sincere and True Translations of the Holy Scriptures Into the English Tongue, Against the Cavils of Gregory Martinby the Puritan divine William Fulke, a contemporary of Martin’s. I wonder if the assumption that Martin was born at Maxfield is based on any earlier sources?

Great Maxfield

On the other hand, if we could prove a connection, it might be further proof of the Catholic sympathies of my Lucke ancestors, especially if Gregory Martin of Mayfield was actually a (former?) priest. However, even if he turns out to have been born elsewhere in Sussex, and even if he was from Mayfield, we have no evidence to connect him with the Gregory Martin of Mayfield mentioned in the wills of John and Thomas Lucke. The fact that they shared a name, and an unusual one at that, suggests some kind of connection – but what?

I’d be interested to hear from anyone with more information about Father Gregory Martin, particularly if you know of any research into his family background.

We were in Vienna, Austria, for a few days last autumn, and on the Sunday morning we went to High Mass at the Augustinerkirche, which was once the parish church of the Habsburgs. The church is noted for its excellent music, and the service was accompanied by a full choir and orchestra performing in the gallery above us. However, as far as I was concerned, the most notable feature of the church was that it was served by a community of Augustinian canons. In fact, although my schoolboy German couldn’t make sense of everything that was going on, I got the impression that a new canon was being admitted to the order during the Mass that we were privileged to attend.

High Mass at the Augustinerkirche, Vienna (via augustiner.at)

I found all of this particularly meaningful because of my recent discovery that a surprising number of my ancestors were members of the Augustinian order. I’ve written before about Bartholomew Fowle, the last prior of the Augustinian house of St Mary Overy in Southwark, who had previously been a canon of Leeds Priory in Kent. Bartholomew is said by some sources to have been the brother of my 13 x great grandfather Gabriel Fowle of Southover, who was master of the Free Grammar School at Lewes, Sussex. In my last post I mentioned Thomas Lucke, who was a canon at Michelham Priory until its suppression in 1537. Thomas was the brother of Richard Lucke whose daughter Alice would marry Magnus Fowle, son of Gabriel. Magnus and Alice were my 12 x great grandparents.

I’ve also discovered a third Augustinian connection. Gabriel Fowle was the son of Nicholas Fowle of Lamberhurst, on the Sussex-Kent border. There is substantial evidence that Nicholas was connected, probably by marriage, to the Pattendens, another yeoman family from the same area. Nicholas’ will of 1522 was witnessed by Walter Pattenden, son of William Pattenden of Benenden. It seems likely that Nicholas was himself the son of William Fowle, who died in 1487. William’s will was witnessed by James Pattenden, who made his own will a year later, in which he made bequests to a certain Thomas Pattenden, prior of Combwell, who also witnessed the will.

Former priory of Combwell, Kent (via theweald.org)

Combwell was another Augustinian foundation, about five miles from Lamberhurst, and Thomas Pattenden was its prior from about 1480 until his death in 1513. In his last year, the priory was subject to a visitation by William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury. The account in the Victoria County History does not reflect very well on Thomas:

Archbishop Warham made a visitation of the priory in 1512. Thomas Pattenden had been prior for thirty-two years, and there were six other canons, who stated in their evidence that the infirmary was in great need of repairs and nobody attended to the sick, who had to lie in the dormitory. They had not enough food and drink or clothing, the prior never rendered any accounts, and there was no teacher of grammar. The manors of Benenden and Thornham needed great repairs. John Lanny said that the prior and convent laid him under a debt of £40 in an obligation without any condition to two outsiders, now remaining in the hands of the minister of Mottenden, and arranged that the house should not be indebted by this. The prior said that the obligation was cancelled, and was ordered to show it to the archbishop; and he was also ordered to make a proper account and inventory, to make sufficient repairs to the infirmary before All Saints and to correct the other points mentioned.

I suppose that, before the Reformation, most English families had at least one member who belonged to a religious order. But the frequency of my ancestors’ connections with the Augustinians is quite striking and suggests a close relationship with the order. Founded in the eleventh century, the Augustinian Canons Regular live together in community and their main purpose is to undertake the public ministry of liturgy and sacraments. There seem to have been a remarkable number of such communities in Kent and Sussex in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and I would be interested to hear, from anyone who is familiar with the history of the order, whether this was typical of England as a whole.

I’m not sure whether the connection between the Fowle, Lucke and Pattenden families and the Augustinians means that my ancestors were particularly pious. However, there is some evidence that their attachment to the Catholic faith remained strong, even after the English Church split from Rome. In writing about Bartholomew Fowle, I noted that he continued to serve as a priest after the suppression of Southwark Priory by Thomas Cromwell’s agents in 1539, and that five years later he was still being asked to say prayers for the soul of the wife of a former lord mayor of London. When my 13 x great grandfather Gabriel Fowle made his will in 1554, he asked for ‘x preistes yf they can be gott to celebrate & say masse for my sowlle & all crysten sowles, & to be honestly recompensed by my executor’ and bequeathed ‘my wrytten masse book’ to his parish church in Southover. Admittedly, this was during the reign of Queen Mary, when Catholicism was briefly restored in England, but it suggests that Gabriel kept faith with the old religion through the difficult days of Henry’s and Edward’s reigns.

Gatehouse, Michelham Priory

Thomas Lucke had composed his own will three years earlier, when Edward VI was still on the throne. We know from visitation records that Thomas was serving as precentor at Michelham in 1521. He was one of eight canons, in addition to the prior, Thomas Holberne. Michelham was suppressed on 1st October 1537, becoming the first religious house to be given to his notorious agent Thomas Cromwell by Henry VIII. Following the priory’s enforced closure, the canons each received a pension of £13.13.4. The prior lived on near Eastbourne, receiving a pension of £20, until his death in 1545. Apparently most of the other canons went to Sussex parishes and were allowed to keep the beds on which they had slept.

Thomas was transferred to the nearby parish of Litlington, where he was serving as curate in 1551, the year in which he made his will. The will, as well as supplying us with a useful catalogue of local names, is notable for its traditionally Catholic preamble:

Ffyrst I comytt my soule into the hands of almyghtie god, wth the intercessyon of the blessed virgyn marye mother of god and all the holy companye of heaven.

These words, written four years into the reign of Edward VI and two years after the Catholic mass had been banned in England, suggest that Thomas continued to adhere to the old religion even after his enforced departure from Michelham and his appointment to a parish in the (now protestant) English church. As Robert Whiting explains, bequeathing one’s soul to the Virgin Mary and the saints remained common throughout the middle years of the 16th century, despite the dramatic changes under Henry and Edward, and the practice only began to decline during the reign of Elizabeth. Tim Cooper points out that preambles of this kind were popular not only with the laity but also among clergy who wished to signal their continuing attachment to the traditional faith. Robert Brooke of Litlington, one of the witnesses to Thomas Lucke’s will, included a similar bequest – ‘to our Lady Saynt Mary and to all the holy company of heaven’ – in his own will six years later.

There is evidence that Thomas was not the only member of the Lucke family to maintain his allegiance to the Catholic faith after the schism between England and Rome. John Lucke of Mayfield, who was almost certainly a relative of Thomas, and may well have been his brother, made his own will two years earlier, in 1549. Like Thomas, John Lucke begins by committing his soul ‘to Almightie god our lady saynt Mary and all the glorious company of heaven’. But he goes further than Thomas in his explicit Catholicism, following the medieval practice of donating money for the maintenance of ‘lights’ for the altars of local churches:

Item I give to the high aultir ther for my tithes & oblacions forgotten or withholden lyd. Item I bequeath to the light of the withsaid church lcyd. Item to our mother church of seynt ayngell of Southemallinge vyd.

As Caroline Litzenberger notes, bequests of this kind provide us with vital evidence of continuing popular adherence to the traditional faith. Indeed, some historians maintain that most of the population remained Catholic in their sympathies until Elizabeth’s reign. Towards the end of his will, having left money to his unmarried daughter Christian, John Lucke appends the following proviso:

Item if the saide Cristian happen to dye before she be married then the said fyve poundes to be bestowed in this manner five nobles to apriest to praye for my soule her soule and all xten soules and other five nobles to the church of maughfield aforesaid.

Paying to have Masses said for one’s soul after death was a defiantly Catholic practice. John Lucke’s bequest suggests either that he knew his parish priest was enough of a traditionalist to carry out his request, or that he was confident, despite Edward’s protestant reforms, of a return to Catholic practice.

Parish church, Litlington, Sussex, where Thomas Lucke served as curate after the suppression of Michelham Priory

The wills of Thomas and John Lucke suggest that the Lucke family remained Catholic in its religious sympathies, at least during the middle years of the century. This may help us to understand how my 12 x great grandparents Alice Lucke and Magnus Fowle came together. I’ve already mentioned the explicitly Catholic will of Magnus’ father Gabriel. I’ve also written written before about the likelihood that Magnus was himself at the very least a church papist – a covert Catholic, outwardly conforming to the newly-protestant Church of England – living as he did during the reign of Elizabeth I, with its increasing persecution of those who remained faithful to England’s traditional religion. Evidence of Magnus Fowle’s true allegiance can be found in the bequest of twenty shillings in his own will of 1595 to Eleanor Ashburnham, a member of a notable family of Sussex recusants (Eleanor had been fined £40 for recusancy three years earlier). Moreoever, it appears that Magnus’ bequest of his own soul to the Trinity – ‘to Almightie god, the father, the sonne, and the holie ghoste, Three persones and one god’ – was a neutral form of words often used by Catholics and ‘church papists’ to signify their allegiance to the traditional faith, while avoiding both an accusation of recusancy and the florid Calvinist-influenced language of the reformers.

This evidence from my family history research goes some way to confirming the claim, made by a number of historians, that the population of England remained mostly Catholic until at least the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign.

What happened to the monks and friars who were expelled from their monasteries and other religious foundations when they were suppressed by Henry VIII?

Earlier this year I wrote about Bartholomew Fowle alias Lynsted, the last prior of St Mary Overy, Southwark, who I believe to have been one of my ancestors. Southwark was an Augustinian foundation and before joining it in 1509, Bartholomew had been a canon of Leeds Priory in Kent, where I believe the Fowle family originated. I’ve been trying to discover Bartholomew’s precise relationship to my Fowle ancestors: some sources claim that he was the brother of my 13 x great grandfather Gabriel Fowle, the master of the Free Grammar School in Lewes, Sussex, but I’ve yet to discover any reliable evidence of this.

St Mary Overy, Southwark

We know that Bartholomew continued to serve as a priest after his expulsion from Southwark priory, if only because of a bequest in the will of Dame Joan Milbourne, the widow of a former Lord Mayor of London, which was a payment in return his prayers for her soul. This bequest, made in 1543, is evidence not only of the persistence of traditional religious practices, nearly a decade after the Act of Supremacy, but also of Bartholomew continuing to practice as a Catholic priest.

Last week I came across another clue in my quest for information about Bartholomew Fowle, one that throws a little more light on his life after the ‘surrender’ of St Mary Overy to Thomas Cromwell in 1539. The last will and testament of a certain William Fowle of Mitcham, Surrey, made in 1547, makes two bequests to ‘Sir Bartholomew Fowle, priest’. The first relates to ‘my …. gardeyn with thappurtenances at Camberwell’ and the second consists of ‘all suche money as Sir Edward Boughton knight and his sonne do owe unto me by their obligacon with condicion’. (Boughton was a landowner who owned property in Woolwich, on the banks of the Thames.) Once again, it’s clear that, eight years after the closure of Southwark priory, Bartholomew Fowle was still being described as a priest, and presumably one who was still living in the environs of London (Camberwell is about three mile from Southwark, and about eight miles from Mitcham).

London Bridge, St Mary Overy and part of Southwark, from a 1616 drawing by Wenceslaus Hollar

Frustratingly, I’ve yet to discover whether Bartholomew held a formal clerical post after his dismissal from St Mary Overy. A record of the dispossessed clergy of Surrey provides information on what became of twelve canons of St Mary Overy (was that the total number?) after the Dissolution. We learn that Thomas Hendon became rector of Staplehurst in Kent in the years 1554 – 1559 (roughly the years of Mary’s reign), while a Thomas Kendall or Kensall was vicar of Carisbrooke on the Isle of Wight in 1543. The only information given about Bartholomew Fowle is the amount of his pension (£100) and the fact of his being given a house ‘in the Close’ (presumably in Southwark). Did the pension mean that he didn’t need to seek a regular clerical appointment, or was his failure to take up such a post a reflection of his dissatisfaction with the post-Reformation Church?

I recently discovered that Bartholomew Fowle isn’t the only Augustinian canon in my family tree. Gabriel Fowle’s son Magnus married Alice Lucke of Mayfield, Sussex, and they were my 12 x great grandparents. Some time in the 1550s they were involved in a legal dispute concerning the will of one Thomas Lucke, dated 1551. Thomas seems to have been Alice’s uncle (the brother of her father Richard Lucke of Mayfield) and at the time of his death he was curate of Lythington or Littlington in Sussex. A man named Thomas Lucke had been a priest at the nearby Michelham Priory, an Augustinian foundation until its suppression in 1537, when it had the dubious distinction of being the first monastic site to be awarded to Thomas Cromwell. Is it possible that this Thomas Lucke became a secular priest on his ejection from Michelham and turned up at Litlington, which after all was only about six miles away?

Interestingly, yet another – and rather more controverisal – former Augustinian turns up as a witness to the will of another of my Sussex ancestors. Christopher Maunser of Hightown, Wadhurst, was another of my 13 x great grandfathers: his great granddaughter Mary married Stephen Byne, the son Edward Byne and Alice Fowle, the latter being the daughter of Magnus and granddaughter of Gabriel. They were my 10 x great grandparents. Christopher Maunser made his will in 1545, bequeathing his soul ‘to almighty God, our lady Saint Mary and all the (glorious) company of heaven’, another indication that Catholic practices had by no means died out in the later years of Henry VIII’s reign (he died in 1547).

However, one of the witnesses to the will was a certain ‘Sir Thomas Hothe, preste’. The same man would also witness the will of John Wenbourne, who was probably the father-in-law of Christopher Maunser’s daughter Mildred, just over a year later. Despite my best efforts, I’d been unable to find any reference to Hoth in contemporary records, and there seems to be nothing about him in the clergy database. But then I came across a chapter by Paul Quinn on ‘Richard Woodman, Sussex Protestantism and the Construction of Marytrdom’ in Art, Literature and Religion in Early Modern Sussex: Culture and Conflict (Ashgate, 2014), in which he mentions a Thomas Hoth who was formerly the precentor of the Augustinian New Priory in Hastings, but who in 1533 was charged with ‘rejecting purgatory, tithes and payment on the four offering days, and of supporting clerical marriage, a vernacular translation of the New Testament, and justification by faith’. In other words, he was an early protestant radical. It’s possible that this Thomas Hoth went on to become an itinerant protestant preacher and that he may have radicalised a number of the Sussex martyrs who died during Queen Mary’s reign.

The burning of Richard Woodman and other protestant martyrs in Lewes in 1557

Quinn also suggests that Hoth may himself have suffered for his beliefs, perhaps being identical with the Thomas Ahoth who is listed in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. If my ancestor Christopher Maunser was one of those who responded to Hoth’s preaching, then his will provides fascinating evidence of how emerging protestant sympathies sat alongside continuing affiliation to Catholic practices, such as prayers to Mary and the saints.

Of course, it should be remembered that the whole business of the Reformation can be blamed on yet another renegade Augustinian friar: Martin Luther.

I’ve decided to write something here about my (probable) ancestor Bartholomew Fowle, who was the prior of St Mary Overy, Southwark, at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries, even though he was not strictly speaking a recusant – a term that would only really come into use during the reign of Elizabeth I. However, like countless other faithful Catholics, Bartholomew’s world was turned upside down by the seismic upheavals of the Reformation. Moreover, telling Bartholomew’s story seems like a natural sequel to the last post about my 12 x great grandfather Magnus Fowle and his recusant connections. As with my that post, I’ll be drawing on my own original genealogical research, some of which I’ve already published on my family history blog Past Lives.

St Mary Overy, from John Norden’s map of London (c.1593)

Origins

If some sources are to be believed, Bartholomew Fowle was Magnus Fowle’s uncle, the brother of his father Gabriel, who was my 13 x great grandfather. Gabriel Fowle was the master of the Free Grammar School in Lewes, Sussex, which historically had been linked to the Priory of St Pancras, until the latter’s dissolution and destruction in 1537 by Thomas Cromwell. Gabriel died in 1555, during the brief restoration of Catholicism under Queen Mary, and his will is evidence of his loyalty to the old faith, requesting ‘x [ten] preistes yf they can be gott to celebrate & say masse for my sowlle & all crysten sowles’ and leaving ‘my wrytten masse book’ to his parish church in Southover, Lewes.

Gabriel and Bartholomew were supposedly the sons of Nicholas Fowle of Lamberhurst, Kent, who died in 1522, but there is no mention of Bartholomew in Nicholas’ will. This, and the fact that Bartholomew was also known as Bartholomew Linsted or Lynsted, apparently because he came from the village of that name, also in Kent but some thirty miles from Lamberhurst, lead me to cast doubt on the tradition that he was Gabriel’s brother. It seems more likely that he might have been Nicholas Fowle’s brother, and therefore Gabriel’s uncle. However, there is some evidence pointing to Bartholomew’s connection with the family. When another Fowle brother, Thomas, made his will in 1525, he asked to be buried in the church of St Margaret, Southwark, to which he also bequeathed money, despite the fact that his home was in Lamberhurst. St Margaret’s belonged to the priory of St Mary Overy, Southwark, of which Bartholomew Fowle was then prior. Thomas also left money to his ‘ghostly’ – i.e. spiritual – father: might this have been Bartholomew?

One of the sources of information about Bartholomew Fowle’s birth is the chapter on Lynsted in an eighteenth-century history of Kent, which notes that ‘Bartholomew Fowle, alias Linsted, a native of this place, was the last prior of St Mary Overie, London, being elected to that office anno 1513.’ Interestingly, Lynsted was also closely associated with the Roper family, who were linked by marriage with Sir Thomas More: I’ve written before about the recusant Lady Roper of Teynham who lived at Lynsted Lodge in the early seventeenth century.

Some sources give Bartholomew’s name as Lynsted alias Fowle, while others reverse the order. We can only speculate as to why Bartholomew used an alternative surname. Was it a common habit to take the name of your home village, or was it a particular practice among members of religious orders? Did Bartholomew find it politic to conceal his Fowle family connections for some reason, or alternatively did he have a particular reason (a local benefactor or sponsor, for example) for identifying with Lynsted?

Lynsted Lodge, Kent

Leeds Priory

Bartholomew Fowle joined the Canons Regular at the Augustinian priory of St Mary and St Nicholas at Leeds, Kent, about twelve miles south-west of Lynsted and eighteen miles north-east of Lamberhurst, which happened to be one of the manors it owned and one of the parishes for which it possessed the advowson .

Canons Regular were priests living in community under the Rule of St Augustine and sharing their property in common. Unlike monks, who lived a cloistered, contemplative life, the purpose of the life of a canon was to engage in a public ministry of liturgy and sacraments for those who visited their churches. Apparently the canons sought to reflect supernatural order and stability within their priories, with examples of worship, farming, medical care, librarianship, learning, and so forth. The canons often worked in towns and cities, where the worship, medicines, education and the skills of the enclosed Benedictines were not present to the growing numbers of urban dwellers. By the twelfth century hundreds of communities of canons had sprung up in Western Europe. Usually they were quite autonomous of one another, and varied in their ministries.

Augustinian canon

I’m not sure at what age young men and women joined religious orders at that time, but my research into recusant families suggests that it was usually in their middle teens. Even so, this doesn’t help us with determining Bartholomew’s date of birth, since although we know when he left Leeds priory – 1509 – we don’t know when he joined. I haven’t found any records for Leeds priory during Bartholomew’s time there, but two years after he left, Archbishop Warham of Canterbury made a visitation. According to a county history:

Richard Chetham, prior, said that all was well; John Bredgar, formerly prior, was now vicar of Marden, and rarely came to the monastery, but thought that all things were well; and Thomas Vincent, sub-prior, said that much had been reformed, but much still remained to be reformed by the prior and sub-prior. […] Besides the eight canons already named there were twelve others, making a total of twenty in addition to the prior.

St Mary Overy

Bartholomew Fowle transferred from Leeds to the priory of St Mary Overy at Southwark in 1509, the year in which Henry VIII came to the throne. Presumably this was a promotion of some kind, but if so, it wasn’t yet to a senior role in the community, since that would not come until 1513, four years after Bartholomew’s arrival in Southwark. According to one source, Bartholomew Lynsted alias Fowle was elected sub-prior in January 1513, but there is a suggestion that he was promoted again to prior very soon afterwards, perhaps as early as February in the same year. Robert Michell had been prior from 1499 until his resignation in 1512, when he was succeeded by Robert Shouldham, whose term of office appears to have been less than a year.

Southwark church and London Bridge in 1616

According to oral tradition, there had been a church in Southwark, just south of London Bridge, since before the Norman Conquest. In the early twelfth century it was re-founded as an Augustinian priory, dedicated to St Mary, and became known as St Mary Overy (‘over the river’). The canons created a hospital alongside the church, the direct predecessor of St Thomas’ Hospital and originally named in honour of the martyr St Thomas à Beckett.

We know very little about Bartholomew’s time as prior of Southwark, which coincided with the tumultuous years of Henry VIII’s reign. We do know that he was present at an important chapter of the Augustinians in Leicester, on Monday, 16 June, 1518, when one hundred and seventy 1 joined in the procession, of whom thirty-six were prelati or heads of houses. According to one account:

As night came on they adjourned till Tuesday morning at seven, and when they again assembled, the prior of Southwark, with every outward demonstration of trouble and sorrow, appealed for a stricter and verbal observance of their rule. His manner and address excited much stir, but he was replied to by many, particularly by the prior of Merton. On the first day of this chapter a letter had been read from Cardinal Wolsey observing with regret that so few men of that religion applied themselves to study. On Wednesday, the concluding day of the chapter, Henry VIII and his then queen were received into the order.

Sources claim that Bartholomew Fowle was ‘a very learned man’, and not just in matters of religion. He was the author of the book De Ponte Londini in which he popularised a tradition about the origins of London Bridge, subsequently repeated in Stow’s Survey of London. According to one source:

In the early part of the Saxon times there is no notice of any town or other place on this spot ; but a tradition of Bartholomew Linsted, or Fowle, Iast prior of St. Mary Overie, preserved by Stow (Survey of London, book i, chapter xiii), notices that the profits of the ferry were devoted by the owner, “a maiden named Mary,” to the foundation and endowment of a nunnery, or “house of sisters,” afterwards converted into a college of priests, by whom a bridge of timber was built, which with the aid of the citizens was afterwards converted into one of stone.

In 1535 the annual value of Southwark priory was declared to be £624 6s. 6d, with its rents in Southwark alone realising £283 4s. 6d. On November 11th of that year there was a great procession by command of the king, at which the canons were present, with their crosses, candlesticks, and vergers before them, all singing the litany. However, if this was a sign of royal favour towards St Mary Overy, it was to prove shortlived.

Dissolution

In 1531, following the dispute with Rome over his plan to divorce Queen Katharine, Henry VIII had declared himself Supreme Head of the Church of England. Five years later the king, through the agency of his chief enforcer Thomas Cromwell, began the process of suppressing the country’s religious houses and appropriating their property. According to Wriostheley’s Chronicle for the year 1539:

Also this yeare, in Octobre, the priories of Sainct Marie Overis, in Southwarke, and Sainct Bartholomewes, in Smithfield, was suppressed into the Kinges handes, and the channons putt out, and changed to seculer priestes, and all the landes and goodes [escheated] to the Kinges use.

The priory of St Mary Overy was ‘surrendered’ to Thomas Cromwell’s agents on 27th October 1539. Cromwell himself signed the pension list, which granted £8 each per annum to two of the canons and £6 to nine others. There were eleven annuitants in all, besides the prior, with their pensions totalling £70 in all. At least one source claims that Bartholomew Fowle quibbled over his original grant of £80 per annum and managed to have it increased to £100. In addition, Bartholomew was provided with a house ‘within the close where Dr Michell was dwelling’. Robert Michell was the last prior but one before Bartholomew, and had probably resigned due to ill health or old age. (A certain William Michell, almost certainly a relative, had witnessed the will of Thomas Fowle of Lamberhurst in 1525.)

Montague Close, Southwark

In 1545 the priory buildings and grounds came into the possession of Sir Anthony Browne, and there were complaints in the manor court of Southwark that he had opened a public bowling green in the close and was allowing gambling there. Although he was a staunch Catholic, Browne remained a close friend of Henry VIII and became the owner of a great deal of former monastic property. His eldest son, another Anthony, was created Viscount Montague in the time of Queen Mary. It seems probable that Lord Montague lived in what had previously been the house of the prior of St. Mary Overy and utilised the other buildings for stabling and so forth. He died in 1593, leaving to his wife, Magdalen, his mansion house of ‘St. Mary Overies,’ for her life, with reversion to his grandson Anthony.

The area around the former priory buildings became known as Montague Close and, as I’ve noted before, it would become a notorious refuge for Catholic recusants, under the protection of the Browne family.

Later life

There is evidence that Bartholomew Fowle remained in London after his enforced retirement, and also that he continued to serve as a priest. For example, in 1543 Dame Joan Milbourne, the widow of a former lord mayor of London, bequeathed money in her will to a number of priests to come to her burial at the church of St Edmund, Lombard Street, and to pray for her. She left the sum of £6 13s 6d ‘to my very good friend Bartholomew Linsted some time prior of St Mary Overies, to pray for my soul’. From this, we can conclude two things: firstly, that Bartholomew Fowle was well connected with the gentry of London, and secondly that, despite the religious changes of Henry’s reign, Catholic practices such as prayers for the dead remained popular.

The date of Bartholomew’s death is unknown, and I’ve failed to find any trace of a will, but a number of sources confirm that he was still receiving his pension in 1553. In other words, he lived for at least another fifteen years or so after his expulsion from St Mary Overy. This means that, like my ancestor and his relative Gabriel Fowle, Bartholomew may have lived long enough to have his hopes revived by the brief restoration of Catholicism under Queen Mary.

Nave of Southwark Cathedral (Anglican)

As for St Mary Overy, in time the priory church would be renamed as St Saviour’s (my 9 x great grandparents, Magnus Byne, rector of Clayton-cum-Keymer and Anne Wane, were married there in 1640), before becoming the Anglican Cathedral of Southwark in 1905. A Catholic cathedral – St George’s – was dedicated in Southwark in 1848.

This website had its origins in my curiosity about a reference to the Langworth family in the will of my maternal 12 x great grandfather Magnus Fowle, a yeoman farmer of Mayfield, Sussex, who died in 1595. My ancestor’s will includes a rather hostile comment about his neighbour Arthur Langworth, brother of Dr John Langworth, the ‘church papist’ whose religious sympathies I discussed in the previous post. This animosity might lead us to conclude that Magnus Fowle did not share the Langworth family’s well-documented Catholic sympathies (three of Dr Langworth’s children, for example, married into knownrecusantfamilies). However, another brief reference in Magnus’ will paints a rather different picture, and in this post I want to take that as a starting-point for discussing another prominent recusant family with links to my own family history. In doing so, I’ll be drawing on material already published on my family history blog, Past Lives.

An old map of east Sussex (Ashburnham is at bottom right of the image)

The very first beneficiary named in Magnus Fowle’s will turns out to be the most intriguing: ‘I give to Elynor Ashbourneham the daughter of Mrs Isabell Ashbourneham Twentie Shillings in gold.’ The Ashburnhams were an ancient Sussex family, associated with the village whose name they bore, which was near Battle and about fifteen miles from Magnus’ home in Mayfield. The Isabel Ashburnham mentioned in Magnus Fowle’s will was almost certainly the widow of John Ashburnham who sat in Parliament for Sussex in 1554. Isabel was the daughter of John Sackville of Buckhurst in Kent. John and Isabel Ashburnham had six children, of whom the Eleanor Ashburnham mentioned in my ancestor’s will was the fourth. Apparently she died unmarried. Intriguingly, after her husband’s death in 1563, Isabel Ashburnham spent her later years in Lambeth and in 1584 was buried at St Mary Overy in Southwark, a church which had powerful associations for my Fowle ancestors. Bartholomew Fowle, said by some sources to have been the brother of Magnus’ father Gabriel, was the last prior of the Augustinian house at St Mary Overy at the time of its dissolution in 1539. I plan to write about Bartholomew in another post.

St Mary Overy, Southwark, by Wenceslas Hollar

It would appear that the Ashburnhams remained loyal to the traditional Catholic faith, at least initially, despite the upheavals of the sixteenth century. John Ashburnham junior, the son and heir of John and Isabel, and the elder brother of Eleanor, had an accusation of recusancy laid against him in 1574. By 1588 he had amassed so many unpaid fines that his estate at Ashburnham was sequestered by the Crown and later farmed out by Queen Elizabeth to her master cook, William Cordell. It was only recovered when John died and his son, another John, who presumably did not share his father’s religious scruples, became head of the family. The estate was forfeited again during the Civil War, due to the family’s support for the King, but returned to them at the Restoration. (Ashburnham House was eventually sold off and partly demolished in the 1950s. It’s now a Christian conference centre: I remember spending a weekend there in the 1970s). I wonder if it was the family’s loss of their estate that prompted Isabel Ashburnham’s move to Southwark, and perhaps Magnus Fowle’s generous gesture towards her daughter? The question still remains as to why a yeoman farmer was leaving money to a member of a distinguished gentry family. At the same time, I can’t help wondering whether Magnus’ association with the Ashburnhams indicates that he shared their religious principles. Although we know that his father Gabriel, a master at the Free Grammar School in Lewes who died in 1555 during the reign of Queen Mary, remained true to the traditional faith, I have no evidence that Magnus was a recusant. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t sympathetic to those who were brave enough to risk all for the religion of their (and his) forefathers, especially if there were long-standing links between the two families, perhaps connected with their shared patronage of the priory of St Mary Overy. The preamble to Magnus’ will provides few clues to his religious affiliation. Certainly there isn’t the appeal to Mary and the saints that we find in his grandfather’s will, but neither is there any sign of the sole dependence on the Passion and merits of Christ that we find in those of some of his more ardent Protestant descendants. Instead, there is a simple evocation of the Trinity, which Michael Questier claims was often a feature of Catholic wills at this period.

Ashburnham House, before its partial demolition in the 1950s

The recurrence of similar names in successive generations of the Ashburnham family, together with contradictions between the available sources, can make understanding their story confusing. So it’s probably useful to begin with a simple account of their journey through the turbulent sixteenth century. William Ashburnham died in 1530. Since his son John (1), who was married to Lora Berkeley, predeceased him, William left his estate to his grandson, another John (2), who was born in about 1528. It was this John Ashburnham who married Isabel Sackville and served as Member of Parliament for Sussex under Queen Mary. John (2) and Isabel Ashburnham had five children: John (3), Thomas, Anne, Margaret and Eleanor – the latter being the beneficiary of Magnus Fowle’s will. Eleanor’s older brother John (3), who was born in about 1545, inherited the family estate on his father’s death in 1563. It was this John (3) who was accused of recusancy in 1574 and, because of unpaid fines, had his estate sequestered by the Crown in 1588. He married Mary Fane and they had six children: Katherine, John (4), Thomas, George, William and Mary. John (3) died in 1592. His son, John (4), seems not to have shared his father’s religious principles and successfully recovered the family estate. He married Elizabeth Beaumont, Baroness of Cramond and was knighted.

Sir John Ashburnham (1593) by Hieronymus Custodis

Or, to put it more simply:

William Ashburnham (1) died in 1530

John Ashburnham (1), son of William, married Lora Berkeley

John (1) and Lora had a son – John Ashburnham (2) (c. 1528 – 1563) – who married Isabel Sackville (1545 – 1592)

John (2) and Isabel had these children:

John Ashburnham (3) (1545 – 1592)

Thomas (1549 – )

Anne

Margaret

Eleanor

John (3) married Mary Fane – they had these children:

Katherine (c. 1570)

(Sir) John (4) (1571)

Thomas

George

William

Mary

The names in bold are those referred to in the Recusant Rolls – see below. It’s also helpful to see events in the Ashburnhams’ family history in the context of key national events, as in this timeline:

c.1528 Birth of John Ashburnham (2)

1530 Death of William Ashburnham

c.1544 Marriage of John Ashburnham (2) and Isabel Sackville

1545 Birth of John Ashburnham (3)

1547 Death of Henry VIII – accession of Edward VI

c.1552 Birth of Eleanor Ashburnham

1553 Accession of Queen Mary 1

559 Death of Mary – accession of Elizabeth I

1563 Death of John Ashburnham (2)

1568 Marriage of John Ashburnham (3) and Mary Fane

1571 Birth of (Sir) John Ashburnham (4)

1584 Death of Isabel Ashburnham

1592 Death of John Ashburnham (3)

I’ve managed to find the names of various members of the Ashburnham family in the Recusant Roll for 1592. According to one source:

The rolls recorded the punishments and fines of those who refused to conform to the Anglican doctrine. After 1581, recusancy became an indictable offence, so recusants often appear in Quarter Session records and the fines levied were recorded in the Pipe Rolls. After 1592 a separate series of rolls called Recusant Rolls was created which continued until 1691 (previously recusancy was recorded in the Pipe Rolls). The Rolls could include other dissenters or nonconformists and show the fines and property or land surrendered by the accused.

1592 was a critical year for the Ashburnham family. It was the year in which John Ashburnham (3), who had inherited but then forfeited the family estate on account of his recusancy, died. His death offered the prospect of the estate being returned to its owners, once John’s son and heir, John Ashburnham (4), conformed to the state religion.

I’ve obtained a copy of the Recusant Roll for 1592. It’s written in legal and abbreviated Latin: I took Latin ‘O’ Level some forty years ago, so my knowledge of the language is a little rusty, but with the help of a dictionary I’ve been able to make some sense of the document. The Roll is organised by county, and in the section dealing with Sussex I’ve found two long passages which appear to detail the sequestration of the estate of John Ashburnham (3) and its occupation by ‘Willelmus Cordell magister coquus coquine domine Regine’ – William Cordell, Queen Elizabeth’s master cook – and (I think) its return to the Ashburnhams on John’s death.

There are two brief references to Eleanor Ashburnham in the Recusant Roll. In the first ‘Ellionara Ashburneham’ appears in a list of recusants fined £40. Eleanor’s name comes after that of one Eleanor Parker, a spinster of Willingdon, a village about fifteen miles south-west of Ashburnham; she is said to be ‘de eadem’ – of the same – and also a spinster. There is a similar reference a few pages further on in the document. The first list in which Eleanor’s name appears includes three other members of the Ashburnham family: Mary and Katherine Ashburnham, both said to be of Ashburnham and both spinsters, and William Ashburnham of Dallington, which was about five miles north of Ashburnham. Mary, Katherine and probably William were all the children of the recusant John Asburnham (3) who died in 1592. Clearly, they did not share the desire of their brother John (4) to conform to the Church of England, but instead maintained their father’s recusant principles.

There is a reference elsewhere in the document to a William Ashburnham of Ashburnham, but I’m not sure if he is identical with William of Dallington. There are also two references to a Thomas Ashburnham, who is probably another sibling of Mary, Katherine and William, but it’s also possible he was Eleanor’s brother of that name, who is mentioned in their mother Isabel’s will of 1584.

To summarise: we know that in 1592, three years before her name appears in Magnus Fowle’s will, Eleanor Ashburnham, the unmarried, middle-aged daughter of John and Isabel Ashburnham (she was probably about 40 years old at the time), was fined for holding fast to her late brother’s recusant principles. She was joined in this by two of her nieces and at least one of her nephews, and perhaps by her own brother. It’s worth noting that Eleanor’s nephews and nieces would have been in their late teens or early twenties at the time. They were all born in the reign of Elizabeth I and thus represented a new generation determined to hold on to the faith of their ancestors, despite the increasingly heavy penalties for doing so. If Eleanor Ashburnham was still being fined £40 on a regular basis three years later, when Magnus Fowle wrote his will, it makes his bequest to her of ‘Twentie Shillings in gold’ more understandable. It also makes it more likely that Magnus was sympathetic to Eleanor’s religious stance, even though he felt unable, for whatever reason, to adopt that stance himself and face the legal consequences.

The Vale of Ashburnham, by JMW Turner

I’m not an expert on Tudor history, but what I’ve read in the works of Eamon Dufy and other writers on this period makes me wary of assigning definitive religious identities to my sixteenth-century ancestors. When Magnus Fowle was writing his will, the separation from Rome under Henry VIII, the brief restoration of Catholicism under Mary, and the renewed separation under Elizabeth, were fairly recent memories. Magnus would have been baptised a Catholic, married in a church that was officially Protestant, perhaps christened his children in a restored Catholic ceremony, and was buried in a Protestant churchyard – and it’s perfectly possible that all of these ceremonies occurred in the same parish church. The divisions between ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’ identities were yet to harden, and the character of the separated ‘Church of England’ was still in the process of development. A (growing) minority identified themselves as proudly Protestant, and on the other side the recusants, like Eleanor Ashburnham, were defiantly Catholic. But most people, whatever their sympathies, probably kept their heads down and quietly conformed to whichever religious regime was currently in power. As we’ve noted in earlier posts, there were many at this time who were described as ‘church papists’ – that is to say, people who attended or even, like Dr John Langworth, officiated at services of the official Anglican church, in order not to attract heavy fines or other penalties, but secretly maintained their Catholic faith and practices. I wonder if my ancestor Magnus Fowle was one of them?

In recent posts I’ve been exploring the lives of the children of the recusant Sir Thomas Hawkins the elder of Boughton under Blean, Kent, who died in 1617. In this post, I’m turning my attention to Thomas’ daughter Susan or Susanna. The Boughton parish register for 1580 includes the following entry:

The vith of Septebr was bapt. Susan Haukins the Daughter of Thomas Haukyns the youngr.

We know, from an account of the life of Susan’s brother, Henry Hawkins S.J., that she married John Finch of Grovehurst, at Milton next Sittingbourne, who was also said to be a recusant. Sittingbourne is about ten miles north-west of Boughton under Blean. Milton, in some documents called Middleton, is today a suburb of Sittingbourne and known as Milton Regis. A document reproduced at British History Online has this to say about Grovehurst:

Grovehurst, now usually called Grovers, is a manor situated somewhat less than a mile northward from the town of Milton. It was once the inheritance of a family of that name. Sir William de Grovehurst possessed it in the reigns of king Edward I and II as did his descendant Sir Richard Grovehurst in that of king Henry VII. At length Thomas Grovehurst, esq. in the reign of Edward VI alienated it to Clement Fynche, a branch of those of Netherfield, in Sussex, who were descended from Vincent Herbert, alias Finch, and ancestors of the several branches of this family from time to time created peers of this realm, whose arms they likewise bore.

It appears by the escheat-rolls of the 3rd year of queen Elizabeth, that he then held this manor in capite. He died in the 38th year of that reign and lies buried in the great chancel of this church, where is a monument erected to his memory, with the effigies of him, his two wives, and his son John Fynche, on it.

The thirty-eighth year of Elizabeth I’s reign was either 1595 or 1596 (my 11 x great grandfather John Manser of Wadhurst, Sussex, made his will on 26th December 1597 ‘in the fortieth yeare of the raigne of our soveraigne Lady Elizabeth’).

Finch family memorial in Holy Trinity Church, Milton Regis

John Finch’s father Clement Finch was the son of another John Finch who died in 1549. He made his will in the previous year, the third year of the reign of Edward VI, describing himself as ‘John ffynche of Myddleton nexte Syttyngborn in the Countye of Kent, gent.’ One of the executors of the will was Christopher Roper, who was almost certainly the Member of Parliament from Lynsted, the brother of William Roper who married Sir Thomas More’s daughter Margaret, and the father of John Roper, first Baron Teynham.

We learn from John Finch’s will that he was married three times. His third wife, Margaret, who was still living, had previously been married to (Robert?) Piper and by him had two sons, Richard and Robert, and two daughters, Joan and Margaret. John Finch’s two previous wives were called Ursula and Alice. Alice was previously the wife of John Knatchbull (confusingly rendered as Snachbull in the transcription that I found online) and her maiden name was Fowle. She was said to be from Tenterden. There is also mention in the will of a Thomas Fowle of Mersham Hatch, near Ashford (about fifteen miles from Tenterden), who presumably was a relative. I haven’t been able to find any link between this branch of the Fowle family and my own Fowle ancestors, who can be traced to Lamberhurst (though my supposed ancestor Bartholomew Fowle, the prior of St Mary Overie, Southwark, at the time of its dissolution, was said to be from Lynsted). The Knatchbulls also lived at Mersham.

John and Alice Knatchbull appear to have had a number of children before John’s death in 1540. I’ve been unable to find out anything about their son John, but another son, William, married Catharine Greene, daughter of John Greene. A third son, Richard, was married twice and had four daughters by each wife. He also had a number of sons, including Thomas Knatchbull, whose son Norton (1602 – 1685) was a member of Parliament and was made a baronet. A fourth Knatchbull son, Reginald, married Anne Elizabeth Crispe, daughter of William Crispe, lieutenant of Dover Castle. One of Reginald and Anne’s sons, John Norton Knatchbull, became a Jesuit, while their daughter, Elizabeth Lucy Knatchbull, joined the English Benedictines in Belgium and was the first abbess of their convent in Ghent (see this source on the relationship between brother and sister, and between the Jesuits and the Benedictines in exile). Reginald’s and Anne’s two other sons each had two daughters who also joined the Benedictines.

Mary Knatchbull, daughter of John and Alice, married Thomas Finch, son of the John Finch who died in 1549. Thomas Finch seems to have been married twice. His second marriage was to Bennet Norton, the widow of William Norton of Hernehill, and the daughter of William Maycott of Preston next Faversham, whose property Thomas would inherit. I believe that Bennet’s first husband William Norton was related to the Thomas Norton of Fordwich whose daughter Aphra was briefly married to Henry Hawkins, who after her death joined the Jesuits. Bennet Finch died in in 1612. In his will of 1615 Thomas Finch mentions ‘my brother Reginald Knatchbull’ and ‘my nephew Thomas Knatchbull’, confirming that his marriage to Mary Knatchbull had preceded his marriage to Bennet. Thomas appointed his nephew John Finch of Grovehurst as his executor and left him Preston House, also mentioning his wife ‘Suzan’.

Memorial to Thomas and Bennet Finch in Preston parish church, Kent

Thomas Finch had two brothers, Clement and Henry or Harry, both of whom are mentioned in their father’s will. Clement was the father of John Finch who married Susan Hawkins. I haven’t managed to find out much about him, but I suspect he was born in the 1540s and probably married (though we don’t have the name of his wife) in the late 1570s. However, we do know that he had another son besides John: I’ve found a baptismal record for Thomas Finch, son of Clement, in October 1580. There was also a daughter named Bennett who was christened at Milton in January 1582. She married Edward Hales of Chilham in about 1603 and they had five sons and seven daughters before Edward’s death on 10th January 1634. The will of Thomas Finch, brother of John, refers to ‘Bennet Hales, wife of Edward Hales, gent., my niece’. There is a plaque commemorating Edward and Bennet Hales in the north chancel of the parish church in Faversham (see below).

via flickr.com

I imagine that John Finch and Susanna Hawkins were married some time in the first decade of the seventeenth century, and certainly by 1608. I’ve found evidence of a Susan Finch being born to John Finch of ‘Milton at Sittingbourne’ in 1609. We also know that John and Susan Finch’s daughter Elizabeth, who would join the English Benedictine convent in Ghent, was born in 1614. Since the will of Susan’s brother Sir Thomas Hawkins the younger, written in 1639, appoints his nephew Clement Finch as an overseer, I conclude that John and Susan Finch had a son of that name.

Elizabeth Finch took the additional name Aldegonde when she joined the Benedictines. She was clothed in Ghent on 13th December 1643 at the age of 29 and professed on 5th February 1647 at the age of 31. In 1665 Elizabeth left Ghent to help found another convent in Ypres, though she only stayed a year or so, returning to her former convent before the end of 1666. She died in Ghent on 1st February 1692 at the age of 78.

There’s firm evidence that Susan Hawkins remained true to her family’s Catholic faith after her marriage to John Finch. I’ve only found second-hand evidence of John’s recusancy, but the National Archives contains at least three documents attesting to Susan’s refusal to conform to the established protestant Church. In April 1607 an indictment in the records of the West Kent Quarter Sessions stated that ‘Susan, wife of John Finche of Milton, esquire, being over sixteen years of age “did not repaire” to the parish church of Milton or any other church for the space of two months.’ A similar indictment was issued in the following year. And on 15th January 1610 an Ecclesiastical Cause paper recorded the excommunication of a number of defendants, including ‘Lady Ann HAWKINS wife of Sir Thos H Boughton Blean, Sus FINCHE wife of John F Milton by Sittingbourne gent’: in other words, Susan Finch née Hawkins and her mother.

I’m not sure when John Finch died, but I’ve found a record of Susan’s death in 1641, which states that she was a widow. I assume that the Clement Finch of Grovehurst who made his will in 1645 was John and Susan’s son. If so, then during his relatively short life (he was probably only in his forties when he died), Clement and his wife Mary, who seems to have survived him, managed to produce four sons – John, Clement, Harbert and Charles – and three daughters – Mary Ann, Elizabeth and Philip (sic). There is evidence that John, Clement Finch’s eldest son and heir, maintained the family tradition of recusancy and as a result the family continued to be penalised after Clement’s death.

Judging by his will, there is no doubt that this Clement Finch held resolutely to the faith of his fathers, the preamble being the most explicitly Catholic that I’ve yet to come across, especially when we consider that it was written at the height of the Civil War and proved during the fourth year of Cromwell’s Commonwealth:

First I bequeath my soule into the blessed hands of my deare Saviour Jesus Christ who redeemed it with his precious blood firmly beleiveing all whatsoever his Spouse the holy Catholic Church holds and teaches out of which there is noe salvation.

In my post about the Langworth family, I noted that at least two of the daughters of Dr John Langworth (d. 1613), the cleric and poet described by at least one source as a church papist, married into Catholic families. One of these was Helen, also known as Eleanor, who married London citizen and haberdasher Nathaniel Spurrett. To be precise, evidence of Catholic sympathies is to be found in documents relating specifically to Nathaniel and Helen, and to their daughter Frances, who became a Franciscan nun. The information about the wider Spurrett family is (as with the Langworths) rather less straightforward.

I’ve yet to find a baptismal record for Helen Langworth, but (judging by the date of her marriage) I would imagine she was born in the 1590s. According to the record of the Kent Visitation of 1619, she was the fourth daughter of John and Frances Langworth, born after Mary and Ann but before Martha. She is described in the record as ‘Helena p’mo nupta Nathaniel Spurrett civis Londiniensis’.

I haven’t seen a copy of John Langworth’s will, but it’s curious that the summary of it in the Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica makes no mention of Helen, though she would have been alive in 1613 when it was made. However, the complete list of John Langworth’s children, beneath the will summary, includes ‘Helen, wife of Nathaniel Spurrett, gent.’

My initial source of information about Nathaniel Spurrett’s background was an article about his father Anthony on a Spurrett family history website. From this I gather that Anthony Spurrett was born in about 1548, in the first year of the reign of Edward VI, to William Sporrytt, a husbandman in Woodhouse, in Wharfedale, Yorkshire. It appears that Anthony attended the school in the neighbouring village of Burnsall, whose vicar recommended him to St John’s College, Cambridge as a sizar – in other words, a student who receives financial support in return for working for the college in some way, for example as a servant to wealthier students.

No record of Anthony Spurrett’s graduation from Cambridge exists, but according to the same source he was at first employed by the Bishop of Worcester, the city where he married his first wife, the parish record describing him as a ‘clergieman’ (clergy had only been allowed to marry since 1548, the year of Anthony’s birth). According to at least two sources his wife’s name was Margaret Unwin. In 1573, in the fourteenth year of the reign of Elizabeth I, Anthony Spurrett was appointed rector of Wolford in Warwickshire, under the patronage of Merton College, Oxford. A year later he took on the additional role of vicar of nearby Icomb, which was then in Worcestershire but is now in Gloucestershire. His first wife having died, Anthony married Ann Wilson in Icomb in 1588.

St Mary the Virgin, Icomb (via roots web.ancestry.com)

It appears that Anthony Spurrett had three sons, of whom Nathaniel was the youngest. However, his will of 1616 mentions only Nathaniel and his brother George, the executor of the will, though there is also a reference to a Robert Spurrett of Maugersbury, about five miles from Icomb. George Spurrett seems to have been married and to have had at least two daughters, Anne and Susan. Another family tree found online at Ancestry claims that he also had a son named Samuel and that the family lived at Siddington near Cirencester.

Given his son Nathaniel’s later religious affiliation, it would seem reasonable to assume that Anthony Spurrett was also sympathetic to the traditional Catholic faith, even though (like Dr John Langworth) he chose not only to conform but to serve the Church of England as a parish priest. However, his will gives little inclination of Anthony’s religious proclivities: certainly, the preamble expresses none of the dogged dependence on salvation through Christ’s Passion alone of outright protestants, but neither does it use any of the formulas, such as trust in the Holy Trinity, of Catholic or Catholic-leaning wills of the time. Instead, Spurrett simply commends his soul ‘into the hands of the Almightie’: though perhaps this very simplicity could be interpreted as a way of avoiding showing one’s hand, so to speak? (I’m sure that the subject of will preambles will be something this blog returns to regularly).

Since Nathaniell Spurrett was a London citizen and haberdasher, I would imagine that he was sent to London as a young man to be apprenticed, as a number of my ancestors would be later in the same century. For example, my 8 x great grandfather John Byne (1651 – 1689), a stationer at Tower Hill, was also the son of a rural clergyman, Magnus Byne, rector of Clayton-cum-Keymer in Sussex. And John Byne’s father-in-law, Thomas Forrest (died 1678), was himself a haberdasher in the same district, having been born in rural Worcestershire. In fact, it’s possible that Nathaniell lived in the same part of London as my ancestors, since he married Helen Langworth at St Botolph, Aldgate, the church which they also frequented. The parish register of St Botolph records that in October 1611 ‘Nathaniell Spurrett, and Hellen Langworth, were marryed the xxith day, by a Licence’. This was in the eighth year of the reign of James I, the same year that the King James Bible was published and six years after the Gunpowder Plot. Two weeks after the Spurretts’ wedding, Shakespeare’s Tempest would be staged for the first time.

We know from a number of sources that Nathaniel and Helen Spurrett had only one child – a daughter named Frances. She is mentioned in the family history article that I’ve already referred to, and in the wills of both her parents, as well as this bequest in the will of her paternal grandfather Anthony Spurrett:

I give unto the daughter of my son Nathaniel ten pounds of lawful money of England to be sett forth unto her use at her age of ten yeares by my Executor and the use of it to be payed to her selfe, but if she die before her age of ten yeares, then I appoint the money to returne to Susan Spurrett the youngest daughter of my sonne George Spurrett.

I’ve found a christening record for a Frances Spurrett on 22nd August 1613 at Ringmer in Sussex. The parents’ names are not given, but both the date and the location make it very likely that this is the daughter of Nathaniel and Helen. Helen’s father John Langworth had been vicar of nearby Buxted, while her uncle Arthur Langworth had actually lived in Ringmer, at Broyle Place, until his death in 1606.

Parish church, Ringmer, Sussex (via panoramio.com)

So one possibility is that Ringmer had sentimental associations for the Langworth family. Another is that the church was chosen, as must sometimes have happened, because of its incumbent. The vicar of West Firle and Ringmer until his death in 1604 had been John Motley, who was appointed as one of the overseers of the will of Magnus Fowle, my 12 x great grandfather. Motley was followed by Edward Wood, with Marmaduke Browne as curate, until the appointment in 1611 of Simon Aldrich. He was the son of Francis Aldrich, registrar of the Archbishop’s Consistory Court of Canterbury, and he was married in the parish church of St George, Canterbury. This was the parish church of the playwright Christopher Marlowe, who seems to have been an acquaintance. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to discover anything about Simon Aldrich’s religious or political sympathies, but the Canterbury connection (given that Helen Langworth grew up in the city and her father held an appointment at the Cathedral) might be relevant.

Nathaniel Spurrett died in February 1614 at the age of 33, less than a year after his daughter’s birth and after less than three years of marriage. I’ll share my transcription of his will in the next post.

(A version of this post first appeared on my family history site, Past Lives)

My exploration of Elizabethan and Jacobean recusancy begins with a network of families, tangentially connected to my own ancestors, living in Kent and Sussex in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. My interest in the Langworths, the family at the centre of this network, was sparked by an email from Emily Buffey, a doctoral researcher in English Literature at Birmingham University. Emily is researching the early modern dream vision, c. 1540 – 1625, and the focus of one of her thesis chapters is Thomas Andrewe, a minor poet of the period. Andrewe dedicated his 1604 poem ‘The Unmasking of a Feminine Machiavell’ (1604) to Dr John Langworth and Mistress Judith Hawkins. John Langworth, a cleric and something of a poet himself, was the brother of Arthur Langworth of Sussex; John’s daughter Mary married Richard Hawkins, from a notable Kent recusant family.

Parish church of St Margaret, Buxted, in Sussex, where Dr John Langworth was rector in the 1570s (via familysearch.org)

Emily contacted me because Arthur Langworth’s name occurs in the will of my 12 x great grandfather, Magnus Fowle of Mayfield, Sussex, who died in 1595. Here is the relevant passage from Magnus’ will:

Item I give to everye of my servants who are in my house Tenne shillings provided always and my verie will and mynde is That and yf my sonne Edward Byne or my daughter his wiefe or Magnus Byne shall att any tyme entrust bargayne sell alienate lease demyse grante or otherwise convey or assine any of my Landes Tenements rents or herydtaments situate or lyinge in Ringmer or Glynde of the saide countie of Sussex to Arthur Langworth to his heires or to anie of his name, or to anie other p[er]sone or p[er]sones whereby or by meanes whereof anie of my saide Landes or the inhertytance thereof maie come to the saide Arthure or to anie other p[er]sone or p[er]sones to his use, or to the use of anie of his heries or of his name, Then my verie will and mynde is that John Motley gentleman John Fitzherbert, John Corneforde, nowe of Grensted John Shepparde sonne of Robert Shepparde deceased, John Delve and Thomas Sharpe and their heires shall have full power and authorytie to enter into all my purchased Landes and Tenementes and the same to reteyne to them and their heires to the use of the poore of the parish of Ringmer, the Towne of Lewes and Southover, and the parrishe of Retherfield.

I’m intrigued by the intensity of Magnus Fowle’s hostility to Arthur Langworth, and I’m keen to discover its root cause. At the same time, I remain fascinated by Magnus’ religious affiliation. His father Gabriel seems to have remained loyal to the Catholic faith through the religious turbulence of the mid-sixteenth century, while Magnus’ will bequeaths money to members of another famous recusant family, the Ashburnhams, even though Magnus himself appears to have conformed, at least outwardly, to the newly-protestant Church of England. The recusant associations of the Langworths, as well as their link (albeit a hostile one) to my ancestor, have prompted to me to dig deeper into their background and their connection to a network of families with similar sympathies.

According to a number of sources, Arthur and John Langworth were the sons of Lancelot Langworth of ‘Kertlebury’, Worcestershire, and there was a third brother named Adam. The Langworth pedigree in the record of the 1619 Visitation of Kent claims that their mother’s maiden name was Gore and that she was from the same county. Kertlebury doesn’t exist on any extant map of Worcestershire and it’s possible that it’s a mistake for, or an archaic form of, Hartlebury, a village five miles south of Kidderminster. I’ve found records for the births of Arthur and Adam Langworth in Chaddesley Corbett, four miles east of Hartlebury, in 1548 and 1551 respectively. However, the name of their father is said to be Thomas, not Lancelot. Thomas Langworth also had a daughter named Ann christened in the same parish in 1547. Isabel Langworth, whose father’s name is not given, had been baptised there in 1543. In 1544 a John Langworth, whose father’s name was Richard, was christened in Chaddesley Corbett, and in the following year another John Langworth, father’s name unknown, was also born there.

At this stage, it’s not possible to resolve this puzzle about the origins of the Langworth brothers. However, it seems likely that they had at least one sister, since the poet Thomas Andrewe describes John Langworth as his uncle. Of course it’s possible, as Emily suggests, that the word ‘uncle’ is being used loosely, as we know that ‘cousin’ was in other documents of this period, or that Thomas was John Langworth’s ‘nephew’ by marriage, for example to one of his John’s nieces. So far, my research into the Langworths hasn’t been able to determine exactly how Thomas Andrewe fits into the family tree.

Arthur Langworth

Arthur Langworth appears to have been the eldest of the three brothers, and therefore the heir to his father’s estate. This probably explains why, unlike his two younger brothers, he seems not to have been sent to university. It’s unclear at what point the family moved south, since later records find them in Sussex and Kent. We know that Arthur Langworth married in the Midlands – at Halford in Warwickshire (forty-five miles or so from Hartlebury) to be precise – on 10th September 1571, when he was probably in his mid-twenties. His wife was Rose Durant, daughter of William Durant of the manor of Cottesmore, Rutland and his second wife Margaret Sherrard.

Certainly Arthur and Rose Langworth’s children were all born (or at least baptised) in Sussex. Their son Adam was christened at Ringmer on 30th June 1577, but all the other children for whom we have records were baptised at Buxted, some twelve miles to the north: Richard on 11th January 1578; Rose on 17th March 1580; and Arthur on 19th December 1585. The Sussex visitations document also mentions two other sons, John (his eldest and the heir to his estate) and Nicholas, and another daughter named Jane. In addition, Arthur Langworth’s will mentions a son called Edward and a daughter Agnes.

A number of sources confirm that Arthur Langworth and his family lived at The Broyle, a large estate close to Ringmer, which included a deer park. One source has the Langworths living at Broyle Place, a house within the park. The same source states that Arthur also owned lands at Laughton and Little Horsted, but that he died at Blackfriars, London.

The Langworths appear to have had a continuing association with Blackfriars. Arthur’s daughter Rose was married at the church of St Ann, Blackfriars on 22nd December 1607, to William Lovell or Lowell. One pedigree claims he was the brother of Sir Francis Lovell. A number of sources state that Arthur’s eldest son John, who inherited the Broyle from his father, married Mary Challoner, the daughter of Thomas Challoner of Lindfield, Sussex. However, in his will John gives his wife’s name as Barbara. There is a record of a John Langworth marrying a Barbara Challoner at St Ann, Blackfriars, shortly before his death, on 25th May 1612 (oddly, John made his will in the previous year). Perhaps Mary died and John married one of her relatives, perhaps a sister?

There are a number of references to Arthur Langworth in the diary of the theatrical entrepreneur Philip Henslowe, who was originally from Sussex, and whose father had been master of the game at the Broyle. (Henslowe appears as a character in the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love, played by Geoffrey Rush.) Langworth seems to have been involved in a number of property deals with Henslowe, and with his son-in-law, the actor and theatrical manager Edward Alleyn. Langworth’s will mentions a debt owed to him by Alleyn.

Edward Alleyn

On page 157 of Henslowe’s diary we find the following:

mrdm [memorandum] that mr. arture Langworth hath promised the 16. daye of maye 1595 to paye vnto me phillippe Henslowe the some of j undreth pownde ffor a howsee & land [wch] & goode wth he bargained wth me wth owt any condicion but absolutely to paye me so mvche mony & to tacke such a surence as J haue at this time witneses to this promes of payement

The detailed index of persons attached to a modern edition of the diary provides a full list of Arthur Langworth’s business dealings with Philip Henslowe. Many of them involve Henslowe borrowing money from Langworth, but others relate to the sale of parsonages. For example, there is mention of deal between Langworth and Alleyn involving the parsonage of Firle near Ringmer. Relations between Langworth and Alleyn were obviously cordial, since we read that on 4th June 1598 Edward Alleyn was staying with Arthur and Rose Langworth at the Broyle. There is no suggestion in any of these records that Arthur Langworth’s business dealing were at all improper. However, I wonder if Magnus Fowle’s hostility to Langworth might be the legacy of a property deal between the two men that went sour?

Arthur Langworth’s will of 1606 appoints his wife Rose and son Richard as co-executors and his brother John Langworth as overseer. His son-in-law William Lovell was one of the witnesses. Arthur’s eldest son John outlived his father by only six years, dying at Ringmer in 1612, and apparently leaving nine children, of whom his son John (presumably the eldest) is the only one to be named in his will. Also mentioned in the will, and one of its witnesses, is Sir Henry Compton, who sat in Parliament for East Grinstead.

Adam Langworth

Arthur Langworth’s younger brother Adam matriculated at St John’s College, Cambridge, in the Michaelmas term of 1566, which means he was probably born in about 1550. He was said to be ‘of Worcestershire’. He graduated B.A. from Queens’ College in 1569-70 and M.A. from Corpus Christi in 1573, where he had been a Fellow for two years. Afterwards he was a Fellow of St Catharine’s. I don’t know enough about the universities in the sixteenth century to understand the meaning of these appointments, or the significance of Adam’s choice of colleges, or his movement between them. (Some seventy years later, Edmund Byne, a minister of distinctly Puritan sympathies, and the brother of my 9 x great grandfather Magnus Byne, would move between Peterhouse, Trinity and Gonville and Caius Colleges at Cambridge.)

St John’s College, Cambridge, from an engraving c.1685

One pedigree states that Adam was married to a woman with the surname Syms, but I’ve yet to find a record of their marriage. Judging by the birth dates of their children, I would hazard a guess that it took place in the early 1580s, after Adam left Cambridge. For some reason, this Cambridge Fellow decided to follow his older brother Arthur to Buxted in Sussex, where his daughter Elizabeth was born and christened on 29th June 1586. Another daughter, Sybill, followed on 30th December 1588 and a son Thomas on 3rd May 1590.

At some point in the next three years, Adam moved his family to Canterbury, perhaps because his brother John had been given a clerical appointment at the Cathedral. On 28th October 1593 a daughter named Dorothy was baptised there at the church of St George the Martyr, and on 27th January 1604 another daughter named Pelludia was christened in the cathedral. Adam’s first daughter Elizabeth must have died young, as another daughter with the same name was christened at Canterbury Cathedral on 22nd November 1607.

Adam Langworth died in Canterbury in 1622. His will of 1620 mentions his son Thomas and three other sons, Anthony, John and Francis, for whom I’ve yet to find baptismal records. Adam also mentions Elizabeth, whom he describes as his youngest daughter. The will also refers to three married daughters: Sybill and Dorothy, mentioned above, and also Ann.

Dorothy appears to have been married to the John Colman mentioned in the will, since her sons are referred to as Henry, Adam and John Colman. John Colman and Dorothy Langworth had been married on 16th April 1612 at the church of St Mary Bredin in Canterbury. The Colman family were from the village of Petham, about four miles south of Canterbury. In addition to Henry, Adam and John, John and Dorothy Colman had three other sons: Thomas, Benjamin and Nathaniel. I’ve only found a christening record for the last-named, on 20th October 1633 at St Mary Abchurch in London: Adam Longworth’s will suggests that the Colmans owned a house in Cannon Street.

Dorothy’s sister Sybill married Henry Colman, who I believe was John’s brother. I have a note that the ceremony took place in Petham on 17th April 1609, but I can’t locate the source for this. A third son-in-law, Robert Fleming, is named in Adam Langworth’s will, and he appears to have been married to Ann, but I’ve yet to find any firm evidence of this.

In his will Adam Langworth bequeaths to his sons Anthony and John his lease of the manor of Elverland in the village of Ospringe about twelve miles to the west of Canterbury, which he held from the master, fellows and scholars of St John’s, Cambridge, his old college. His son Francis is bequeathed property that Adam leased from the dean and chapter of Christ Church, Canterbury. His eldest son Thomas is appointed as Adam’s sole executor.

Dr John Langworth

John Langworth was born in 1547. He matriculated at St John’s College, Cambridge in 1566, the same year as his brother Adam, but in the previous (Easter) term. He graduated B.A. in 1567-8, M.A. 1572 and B.D. (Bachelor of Divinity) in 1577-8. John was a Fellow of St John’s in 1568. At some point he moved to Oxford University where he was incorporated in 1572 and graduated D.D. (Doctor of Divinity) in 1579. At Oxford John attended Hart Hall, the forerunner of present-day Hertford College, about which Wikipedia has this to say:

In the latter half of the 16th century, Hart Hall became known as a refuge for Catholic recusants, particularly under Philip Randell as Principal (1548–1599). Because of its connection with Exeter College and that college’s increasing puritanism, a number of Exeter’s tutors and scholars migrated to Hart Hall. The hall attracted an increasing number of Catholics from further afield, including the Jesuit tutor Richard Holtby in 1574, who was instrumental in the conversion of his student, and later Jesuit martyr and saint, Alexander Briant to Catholicism. Coming from a Catholic family, the English poet John Donne came up to Hart Hall in 1584.

John Langworth conformed, at least outwardly, to the protestant Church of England, rising to high office in the Church, but one source describes him as a ‘church papist’ and, as we shall see, at least two of his children married into Catholic families. John’s first clerical appointment was as Prebendary of Worcester in 1568, before he moved, like his brothers, to Sussex, where he was Rector of Folkington in 1573 and of Buxted in 1574 (these appointments would have run concurrently with his time at Oxford University). It’s possible, of course, that John baptised a number of his nephews and nieces, the sons and daughters of his brothers Arthur and Adam, during his time at Buxted. John Langworth was appointed as a University preacher at Oxford in 1577. He was Archdeacon of Chichester between 1581 and 1586 and then Archdeacon of Wells in Somerset between 1589 and 1609, before returning to Sussex as rector of Rotherfield in 1592. At some point John moved to Canterbury, where he was Prebendary until his death in 1614.

According to the records of the Visitation of Kent, 1619, John Langworth married Frances Finch, daughter of John Finch of the manor of Sandhurst in Faversham, ten miles to the west of Canterbury and close to Adam Langworth’s property at Ospringe.

In 1602 John Langworth, who was then of Buxted, purchased the manor of Sompting Peverell in Sussex from Thomas Pelham and in 1611 settled it on his fourth son, Anthony. One source describes John Langworth as being ‘of Wilmington’, a parish some distance from Canterbury, near Dartford, and this is certainly where his son Francis would later live. The Kent Visitation of 1619 records that John and Frances Langworth had five children: Thomas, Mary, Anna, Helena and Martha. However, another source adds Arthur, John and Anthony to this list.

John Langworth was the author of a number of religious sonnets, which were published in a contemporary miscellany by John Lilliat, a cathedral musician at Wells, together with poems by better-known figures such as John Davies, George Gascoigne and Christopher Marlowe. I’m grateful to Emily Buffey for sending me a copy of Langworth’s poems, which I’ll perhaps discuss in more detail on another occasion.

John Langworth died in 1613 and was buried in Canterbury Cathedral on 13th January, 1613-4. His daughter Mary married Richard Hawkins, who had been born in 1581. He was the son of Sir Thomas Hawkins (1548 – 1617) of Nash Court in Boughton under Blean, a few miles to the west of Canterbury, and Ann (1552 – 1616), daughter of Cyriac Pettyt and his wife Florence, also of Boughton. Both the Hawkins and the Petits were recusant families. Richard Hawkins’ brother Henry (1577 – 1646) was a Jesuit priest and author, and another brother, Sir Thomas Hawkins (1575 – c.1640) was a translator of recusant books. Other surviving brothers were Daniel (b. 1578), John, a physician and author, and Cyriac. Richard’s sister Susanna (b. 1580) married the recusant John Finch of Grovehurst, Milton near Sittingbourne (was he any relation of John Langworth’s father-in-law, John Finch of Faversham?); another sister Anna married William Hildesley of Oxfordshire; and two other sisters, Bennet (b. 1586) and Benedicta (1588–1661), became Benedictine nuns in Brussels (though one source implies that these might be alternate names for the same sister).

Another of John’s daughters, Helena (also known as Helen or Eleanor), also appears to have married into a Catholic family – or rather, a family with definite Catholic sympathies. On 21st October 1611 she married Nathaniel Spurrett at the church of St Botolph, Aldgate, in London. Nathaniel seems to have been a haberdasher. He was the son of Anthony Spurrett, the rector of Wolford and vicar of Icomb in Gloucestershire and formerly sizar at St John’s College, Cambridge. Nathaniel died only a year after his marriage to Helena, at the age of 33, and shortly after the birth of their daughter Frances. Helena died at Eltham, Kent, in 1626. After her parents’ death, their orphaned daughter was taken in by an order of English Franciscan nuns: she was clothed at the age of 15, and professed at 16. The order was based in Belgium, where Sister Frances Evangelist died in 1635 at the age of 23.

John Langworth’s son Francis was born in about 1598 and followed him to Hart Hall, Oxford, matriculating on 31st October 1617. The list of Oxford alumni states that he was of Wilmington, Kent and that his father John lived at Ospringe, which was where we know John’s brother Adam owned property (see above). Francis was a student at Gray’s Inn in 1620. In 1628 he married Mary Tucker, the daughter of George Tucker of Milton near Gravesend, Kent, and his wife Mary, daughter of John Darrell of Calehill. The wedding took place at Little Chart near Ashford, close to the ancestral home of the Darells at Calehill. It seems that the Darells were yet another recusant family, and were probably relate to the Darells of Scotney Castle, Lamberhurst, about whom I wrote here. Francis and Mary Langworth had four children: Daniel, Francis, George and Elizabeth.

In future posts, I’ll be discussing what became of John Langworth’s children, and exploring their links by marriage with a number of important recusant families.